CHLOE KOWALYK
Managing Editor
Back in high school, about six years ago, I was sitting in my freshman seminar class. We were told to take the Myers-Briggs personality test to help us find our academic and professional personality traits.
I was given an answer that I certainly expected.
While I don’t remember exactly what my full acronym was, it started with ‘I,’ indicating that I was an introvert.
This made a lot of sense.
I was heavily involved in school events, but I was pretty shy and enjoyed being on my own. I felt energized when hanging out with a smaller group and taking time to unwind by myself.
This trend continued throughout high school. I preferred being on my own, but I wanted to change. I always yearned to be like my peers who could hang around large groups of people.
In fact, in my senior year of high school, which began in 2019, I started to come out of my shell.
I became more active on my high school cheerleading team, I became a co-captain of the tennis team and I even served as the vice president of our Student Senate.
My energy was sourced from my interactions with the differing groups of people I would meet in class, across sports and in other clubs.
But then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, sending us into direct isolation without contact in the outside world. My progress of becoming an extrovert was halted.
Quarantine was hard. I lost my musical, prom and graduation, and spent my last year of high school without my friends. We canceled the plans we had made for our final year of high school.
Coming to college was no different. I spent my first semester pretty much alone, even without a roommate past the first month of college. I spent my days in my dorm, slipping back into my introverted state that I was working so hard to overcome.
When my parents came to pick me up at the end of the semester, I watched the campus disappear through our rearview mirror. It was symbolic to me, that a whole semester was pretty much wasted away and behind me. I told myself then that I would strive to make some friends that next semester.
When we returned in the spring, I actually made efforts to talk to the people around me. It was definitely scary at first, but I started to make friends with the people who lived in the suites surrounding mine.
And then we got COVID … Well, not exactly. One of our friends had found out that he tested positive during the pool testing that was being conducted at the time. My other friend and I ended up quarantining and getting tested.
In my mind, I felt like I was almost being punished for coming out of my shell.
But I just knew that wasn’t true.
After luckily not contracting COVID myself, I came back and continued to hang out with my friends once our quarantines were up.
And this is where things picked up.
We found out we were all interested in radio, and started our own segment together. From there, my friends increased from none to many quickly. I began making friends with other members of the radio station, members of WNYF-TV, and even a few people here at The Leader. I found people who had the same passions and interests as me.
Now, I’m an extrovert enthusiast, and I haven’t got much of a tolerance for being alone all the time like I did before.
I’m fueled by my interactions with others, and would much rather sit and do my homework with my friends than sit and do it alone.
I find nothing more enjoyable than laughing with my friends and making the memories that you see in movies.
The COVID-19 pandemic showed me how much it really sucked to not have that human interaction I once feared.
Now that I lost it once, I’m ensuring that I won’t lose it again.